One in four residents will need additional support from their landlord to help pay their rent once housing benefit is paid directly to tenants, according to an organisation involved in the government's demonstration pilot.

Under the government's changes to the welfare system, housing benefit will be paid directly to tenants, instead of landlords as is current practice. This approach is being trialled at a number of housing associations and councils before being rolled out nationally.

Ian Simpson, director of community housing at Bron Afon Community Housing, one of the organisations involved in the pilot, told delegates at the Chartered Institute of Housing conference that rent collection levels had dropped to 95% at the organisation despite tripling the amount of contact made with tenants.

Simpson said housing associations will need to increase the support offered to tenants, but cautioned that this may not be financially viable.

"One in four people in the demonstration project needed ongoing support," he said. "That's a pretty big challenge for us.

"We've doubled the size of our income team and it's probably not going to be enough. It's probably not viable in the financial sense; more people to collect less rent."

Conference delegates also heard that residents are more responsive to assistance from tenancy support teams or independent advisers, rather than housing associations' in-house money advisers.

"People don't like us prying into their financial circumstances," Simpson added.

Simpson also revealed that since the introduction of the bedroom tax in April, 62% of the additional payments due from tenants had not been paid and that indebtedness among the organisation's residents had increased by 46%.

He sympathised with the controversial suggestion by the government poverty tsar Frank Field that housing providers should brick up doors and windows to disqualify spare bedrooms from tenancies and exempt tenants from the bedroom tax.

"The grim reality is that crisis is right around the corner for a lot of those people," he added. "Perhaps then, the only solution is to brick up bedrooms and exclude them from the tenancy."

Mike Owen, chief executive of Merthyr Valley Homes, also revealed that the threat to income from government welfare reforms, and the danger of doorstep lenders, have caused his organisation to hire a rent collector.

"Doorstep lenders are incredibly fast on their feet at getting resources before other people. It was a challenge for us to get there before them," he said. "It's relatively successful but it doesn't feel like the values you want to have in housing.